After a successful first week at the box office, "Fast & Furious 5" must maintain a relatively stable box office trend if it wants to compete for the annual box office title in North America.

Looking at the annual release schedule in North America, it is not difficult to find that every summer season is very crowded, and the most crowded time period is often May, basically every May weekend, there will be a big production to start, and some weekends can even squeeze in two or three films with a production cost of more than 100 million US dollars.

Strictly speaking, July has reached the end of the summer season, and as soon as the Independence Day holiday passes, the number of new big productions released this month will quickly decrease.

But this year is the most crowded summer season advertised by the media.

In the second week of its release, Fast & Furious 5 ushered in a competitor whose production and publicity scale was no weaker than its own.

Produced and distributed by Universal Pictures, directed by Iron Man director Jon Favreau, and starring Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford and Olivia Wilde, "Cowboys and Aliens" was released.

The film cost a whopping $163 million to make and, contrary to anyone's expectations, blended two seemingly incompatible elements of the western cowboy and aliens into the same film.

"Cowboys and Aliens" is also a film adaptation, based on the 2006 comic book of the same name created by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, which tells the story of a spaceship that suddenly breaks into trouble during a war between Indian tribes and western cowboys.

The comics were not a success back then, and the facts after the release of the movie proved that even with Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford, and Jon Favreau, a director with very strong ideas and execution, it still couldn't save this terrible genre.

Over the weekend, the new film earned just $31.05 million.

Such a film certainly does not threaten "Fast and Furious 5", which is more stable, although the box office fell by nearly 55% the following weekend compared to the opening weekend, but still won $67.8 million, easily topping the North American box office charts.

"Cowboy and Alien" is bound to be one of the biggest tragedies of this summer file, like "Green Lantern".

In contrast, "Fast and Furious 5" is the lucky of the lucky ones, with $67.8 million earned this weekend, plus the harvest of the previous four working days, the North American box office crossed the $250 million mark in just ten days of release, reaching a whopping $252.4 million.

Similarly, although the overseas popularity has weakened, with the support of more than a dozen new countries and regions, the overseas box office has still increased by nearly $100 million in the past week.

Thanks to the advantage of opening overseas a week early, the total overseas box office of "Fast and Furious 5" is about to cross 500 million US dollars.

In terms of global box office total, Matthew's latest exact statistic is $741.28 million.

The box office of this film fell directly towards a billion dollars.

Matthew was delighted not only by the box office, but also by the merchandising sales, and the batch of Lumber Tired commemorative T-shirts he ordered across the Pacific sold amazingly well in North America.

The T-shirt, which features all the current members of the racing family, is perhaps a real inspiration and positive energy for its sense of friendship and family, and has attracted a lot of attention from the moment the film was sold in theaters and outlets before its release, and despite the $99 price, it sold well.

Due to the relatively complicated situation overseas, the statistics Matthew did not get it for a while and a half, and so far, this T-shirt alone in North America has sold nearly 20 million US dollars.

Of course, compared with the tens of millions of moviegoers of popular movies in North America, this is less than 2 million sales, and there is still a lot of potential to be tapped.

Let's just say that the number of North American viewers who have watched "Fast and Furious 5" so far, because there is no 3D, the average price of a single film is about $7 for ordinary 2D and IMAX versions.

With a box office of more than $250 million, it means that "Fast and Furious 5" has more than 35 million viewers.

The number of viewers of "Fast and Furious 5" is still increasing, excluding repeat viewers, and only one in 10 people who buy merchandise is enough to create a terrifying sales amount.

If half of the people who have watched the film are willing to pay for peripherals, they will wake up laughing in their dreams.

Although it is difficult to have a film with more than 100 million viewers like "Titanic" in this era, prices are also rising, and it is not uncommon for many films to sell hundreds of millions of dollars.

Like the DVD boom triggered by "Spider-Man 1", the first week of DVD sales in North America sold hundreds of millions of dollars, which is not even much lower than the first week box office of the movie.

Mainstream Hollywood commercial films aim to make a name for themselves at the box office, treat the screening as a huge advertisement, and then make a lot of money on the peripherals.

Many Hollywood commercial blockbusters are increasingly relying on the sales of peripheral products because of their huge investments, and if they want to recoup their costs and ultimately make a profit.

Merchandise connects movies and audiences, and the film industry, which has a huge output value, wants to attract more audiences, and audiences want to be closer to movie idols, who want to be their favorite movie characters or heroes in superhero movies - this method has always worked.

Today, the output value of peripheral products has become so large that it is difficult to calculate, and the annual valuation of the film ancillary industry has reached hundreds of billions of dollars, including licensing and peripheral products have become the pillar industry of Hollywood.

Take the past 2010 as an example, according to incomplete statistics from Hollywood, the total global box office was about 32 billion US dollars, and the global sales of movie peripheral products were about 227 billion US dollars.

How can we make more money in the periphery? This is a major topic that is being studied all over Hollywood, and it is also what Matthew has been paying attention to.

Of course, if you want the surrounding area to be popular, the box office can be said to be a prerequisite, like "Cars", which has a box office and can sell five billion dollars in the periphery, Hollywood has only released one so far.

Entering mid-July, Warner Bros. produced and released "Evil Boss" kicks off for a new weekend, a comedy film that brings together big-name stars such as Jason Bateman, Jennifer Aniston and Kevin Spacey.

However, the R-rated rating determines that the film has a limited audience, and although the North American box office of $28.3 million in the opening weekend is relatively bright enough for the production cost of $35 million, it cannot stop "Fast and Furious 5" from continuing to sit on the top spot at the box office last week.

"Fast and Furious 5" still maintained a relatively stable and healthy box office trend, taking another $32.2 million from North America in three days over the weekend, and the North American box office totaled $311.27 million.

As for "Cowboy and Alien", which opened last weekend, the box office fell sharply amid the shouts from the media, fans to film critics, and the box office this weekend fell directly below $10 million, easily surpassed by films such as "Transformers 3", and fell out of the top five at the box office.

In addition, in the market on the other side of the Pacific, the box office of "Fast and Furious 5" has accumulated 1,215.38 million soft girl coins.

Because of the special schedule in July, this film did not get the key to the postponement of the screening, and there is still a week to withdraw from the film over there.

But such box office results have already made Matthew very satisfied.

At this time, there was a piece of news that caught Matthew's attention, and Michael Bay, after many hypes back and forth between quitting and continuing to direct, officially announced that "Transformers 4" was still his dish.

How much attention does Michael Bay alone gain in terms of publicity? And the reverse always uses a trick.

In fact, everyone in the circle knows that many big directors can't take their words seriously in this regard, and it is more for the needs of publicity.

There is a saying on the other side of the Pacific Ocean that "if you don't have faith, you can't stand", but many Hollywood directors are still having a good time in the film industry after repeatedly "breaking their promises", so this is not necessarily right in Hollywood, and the key depends on who says it.

For example, Michael Bay, since the release of "Transformers 1", has repeatedly said that "I will never make "Transformers" again".

But in the blink of an eye, "Transformers 4" is about to start, and the director is still Michael Bay, and in an interview with media reporters, Michael Bay once again set the flag, this time he said again, "This is really my last "Transformers" series of movies. ”

Perhaps Michael Bay himself knows that this seems to be exciting, but the result is often the opposite of expectations, and in order to avoid killing, he can only continue to shoot until the day when the series is rotten at the box office and is axed.

Whether everyone believes it or not, he himself believes it anyway.

The benefits of this are obvious, both to gain attention and to put pressure on the producers to get better pay.

Another increasingly fat director, Luc Besson, declared to the world 800 years ago: I only make ten films in my life.

After filming the ninth installment, Luc Besson made another animated trilogy of Arthur and His Mini Kingdom. And then ...... All in all, his dozen films have already started shooting?

I guess the French can't even figure it out.

How to put it, the phrase "break your word and get fat" on the other side of the Pacific still came true in Luc Besson.

Another director who claims to stop after ten films is Quentin Tarantino, and "Django Unchained" is currently said to be in production, and the next one seems to have a script outline, which he regards as his eighth film.

The problem is that there are now more than 10 directorial works listed under the name of the ruffian Quentin...... Of course, if "Kill Bill 1" and "Kill Bill 2" count as one movie, not counting movies like "The Torture Room" that he co-directed with Robert Rodriguez, Quentin won't break his promise.

Matthew didn't think about it, and when the next movie was promoted, he also made a statement that he would retire after making ten more movies, which must have attracted more attention, but the terrifying existence of the flag killing still made him just stop thinking.

What if the flag comes true and the tenth part of the hiccup is finished?

There are so many beauties in Hollywood, aren't they all cheaper than others?

Fast & Furious 5 continues to reap the box office, and Matthew meets up with Ridley Scott to talk.